The Little Card Shark that Could
by Lucretia Nettleson
Summary: A somewhat Dickensonian tale of a boy who was destined to be a great wizard, but for now is a card shark. Please disregard stupid things such as purple hats and the title of this fic.


Title: The Little Card Shark that Could.  
Archive: Yes, just please e-mail me at Stephanie@12thtexascav.org FIRST to let me know where you're placing this.  
Rating: G  
Ships: none.  
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is copyright to J.K. Rowling. I take no credit for the invention for any of the Harry Potter creation. I make no money off of this. I do, however, have to take credit for coming up with such a ridiculous title.  
~  
  
It is a fact that according to the laws of Physics, a bumblebee's wings are too small for its body. So it is a freak of nature, a disregard for the laws of Physics themselves, that a bumblebee takes flight...  
  
  
Footsteps pounded the cobblestone streets. The boy was running as fast as his little skinny legs could carry him. He shouldn't have done that. He knew that now-he knew it before too. But why, or how was more likely the question, he did it, he didn't know. It seemed dangerous to get angry or scared at all anymore.  
One moment he had been standing there, cornered into an alley by Donald Dinsmoor and his gang, ready to get the tar beat out of him, and the next...the next moment he was sitting comfortably on top of Peter Nickle's Bakery. Sure, it surprised Don's troop of street bullies, and it had been fun to have them look so bewildered up at him, but he had had a heck of a time getting down. And then there was the policeman.  
  
He knew that it wasn't everyday that little boys leapt like a flea to sit on top of a roof, so he highly doubted the policeman would believe him when he told him that he had no idea how he came to be sitting on top of Peter Nickle's Bakery. So he did the only thing a ten year-old boy could do who didn't want to get into trouble with his mum.  
  
He ran.  
  
He ran hard, right down Vauxhall Road, spooking a cabby's horse as he rounded a corner where a millinery stood, displaying bonnets bedecked in feathers, ribbons, and all manner of fluff. On and on he went until he felt like his heart would burst, until he burst right through a door of a small, grimy little brick building. After clambering up some old wooden steps, he stopped in the stairwell to catch his breath.  
  
His cheeks were red and flushed rosy from the exercise. He leaned against the wall and placed his hands on his knees. He was going to have to look somewhat better when he entered his family's flat. His mother would be there, and any time he came back, his cheeks flushed and his hair wild, she suspected he had been up to no good. From inside the door a small child cried: his little brother, and he could hear his older sister cooing to comfort him.  
Slowly, he let out a sigh and slid down to the floor, but he lost his balance and fell over in the process.  
  
"Hey, Squirt!" came his sister's voice. "Squirt, is that you?"  
Quickly, he scramble to his feet, ran his fingers through his hair and tried to straighten his shirt before the door opened. His sister stood there, scowling horribly. She had the same reddish brown hair and blue eyes as he did, and she would have been admittedly pretty if her face didn't always look so ready to do battle.  
  
"Where have you been? Mother's been fretting terrible," she eyed him critically. "You've been fighting again, haven't you? Mum," and she turned back into the apartment, "The Squirt's been fighting again."  
  
Truthfully, he never did actually fight. He never even wanted anything to do with that sort of thing, but somehow...he just had the worst of luck.  
  
"Is it true? Have you been fighting again?" his mother asked from where she sat in a chair by a window, placing some last trimmings on a straw poke bonnet.  
"No, I haven't been fighting," he said truthfully.  
  
She wore little square reading glasses and looked over them at her muddy and flushed son. "Then it must have been a rough walk through a muddy countryside to get to the millinery, and last time I went there myself, I was back in twenty minutes. Did you find a new place to sell my hats? Or were we over in that horrible pub playing ten pins again, stirring up trouble?"  
  
He looked down at his boots, as if the answers were there written on his laces. Before replying, he wiped his runny nose on his sleeve, and then he remembered something in his pocket.   
  
"You got good money this time," and he held out a wad of paper notes for her to take. "Mr. Spoon paid extra for that blue one. Said it was stunning and 'spect he'd sell it real quick."  
  
She methodically counted out the money. When she was through, he could tell that she was somewhat surprised. "Well..." she began slowly, but her tone then changed to a scolding, "and you could have lost all this by getting in a fight! Then where would we be?"  
  
He looked back down at his laces. Nope, still no answers, so he glanced over at his three year-old brother who sat stacking some coals into a little stonewall. "I'm sorry," he mumbled, thinking of nothing better to say.  
  
"You better be-oh, Forth, don't play with those. Belinda, stop your little brother from playing in the coal."  
  
His sister hurried over and immediately, the baby started to cry. The moment he opened his mouth, his wall came tumbling down, as if it had been knocked over, but no one had touched it.  
  
"Here," his mother handed him a note and he was forced to look away from the queer incident. She didn't seem to have noticed. "Go down to the market and get some potatoes, carrots, and an onion. You think that you can do that without bringing a policeman or half the dirt in London back with you?"  
He forced a nod before she shooed him out the door.  
  
***  
  
With the vegetables in a burlap sack, the boy walked back with still a few coins in his pocket. Enough for...he stopped in front of a pub. He gave a quick glance in the direction of home. He'd make it quick.  
  
No one knew exactly how he did it, even he didn't, but he was known by many of the visitors to the pub a block from his house as one of the best one man street magic shows in that part of town.  
  
Once, he had seen a magician do a card trick. Someone picked a card and then he reshuffled the deck and picked the same card they had chosen. He had wondered how the magician had done it, and so decided to play at it once to learn. Then, as the cards were shuffled, he concentrated hard, and he knew-he just suddenly knew right where it was. He was rather happy with himself and had went and bought a deck of cards and tried the trick on his sister, but his mother had walked in, exclaimed the cards to be a sign of poor character and threw them in the stove. Later, he saved up and bought a second deck that he kept hidden. She didn't know it, but some of the money he gave his mum when giving her the money from Mr. Spoon's millinery, was money that he had earned doing his card tricks in the pub.  
  
He hurried across the street and entered the dimly lit building.  
"Ah, it's our little wizard," the bartender greeted upon seeing the small boy enter. "Got any new tricks for today?"  
  
The boy grinned and positioned himself on a stool, then took out his cards and proceeded to shuffle them.  
  
He had a few customers in the next quarter hour, then a strange little man in a beaver skin topper, dyed bright purple with a silk daisy in the band sat down beside him. He wore clothes that were twenty years out-dated and an absurd white wig that had gone out of style at least forty years earlier. The man didn't buy a drink, but was content to only watch the boy as he performed the tricks.  
  
The boy continued his business until there was lull and he turned to the man. "You know, sir. You're dressed awfully silly." Then he realized that his mother would have scolded him for saying that, and that it was rude. But the man only sat back and laughed. Perhaps, he was a bit mad. The boy began to wonder.  
  
"Very interesting tricks there, dear boy," the man complimented after getting over his fit of laughing. "Very interesting indeed."  
  
"They are, aren't they?" the bartender commented. "And no one's ever figured out how he does it."  
  
The man smiled, crinkling up the crow's feet at his eyes. His eyes were a sparkling green that seemed to have laughter all their own from behind a pair of odd, eighteenth-century round spectacles. "That may be," then he said softly so that only the boy could hear, "but I know how you do it." Again he laughed.  
Strangely, the boy got the idea that this man did know how he performed his tricks. He waited patiently for him to stop laughing, when he did, the man stuck out his hand. "George. George Potter. And you are?"  
  
The boy was about to reply when he was suddenly jerked right off his stool. "Here you are. I've been looking all over for you." It was the policeman from earlier in the day. "Are you in trouble now."  
  
"Excuse me," the odd man said, "but has he done something illegal?"  
"Nothing serious," the policeman informed. "He stirs up a lot of trouble. Found him this morning running along the rooftops."  
  
The man actually seemed fairly happy with this, though the boy didn't see anything too great about it.  
  
***  
  
His mother was furious with him, as expected. He got a spoon on the bottom and was sent to bed to brood over his day on an empty stomach. However, he soon turned his thoughts over to the strange man who seemed to know how he performed his card tricks. He wanted to go back to the pub and see if he could find that odd Mr. Potter and ask him how he knew. With this on his mind, he drifted off to sleep.  
  
***  
  
He was awoken the next morning by a scream. Hurriedly, he scrambled out into the kitchen where his mother stood backed up against the table, staring out the window in utter horror.  
  
"What is it?"  
  
"An owl," his mother said breathlessly. "An owl in the daytime. You know what your grandmother used to say. Someone's going to die today."  
  
"Hogwash," the boy mumbled, yawning and scratching the back of his head. "Bunch of silly superstition..."  
  
"Those have some truth to them," his mother argued turning to him. She put a plate with a slice of bread and some butter in front of him. "And it's good to mind her words. Now eat your breakfast. I'm going out to buy some more supplies and I want you here when I get back. We'll be going shopping for a bird for dinner."  
  
"Aren't you still mad at me?" the boy asked warily, wondering why she would be taking him out. She hardly ever went shopping let alone with him.  
"No," she replied. "Today's your birthday so I'll be angry with you tomorrow." With that, she pecked him on the head and grabbed her shawl before leaving.  
The boy turned then to his plate of food. It was then that he noticed it. There was a letter on the table-an important looking one at that. Slowly, he picked it up and turned it over. There was red sealing wax and an important looking seal on the back. He flipped it over to look at the green ink on the front. He couldn't read, so there was no use bothering to look at it long.  
"Belinda?" he called out.  
  
His sister looked around the corner from where she and her mother slept along with his younger brother. "What is it?"  
  
"This letter on the table. Did mother say anything about it?"  
  
Belinda came out and looked it over. "No..." she seemed stumped too.  
  
"Did you see anyone bring it in?"  
  
She shook her head.  
  
"It looks real important."  
  
"Then just leave it. Let mother take care of it when she gets back."  
The boy stared glumly at it while his sister went back to attend to his little brother. The letter had certainly perked his interest. With the seal on it, however, anything from someone important was usually bad. But what would anyone write to them for? He wanted desperately to go find someone to read it for him.  
Slyly, he looked over to the bedroom then hurried, got dressed, snuck out the door with the letter. Hopefully, he'd find someone quick down at the pub and then be back before anyone noticed he was gone. Maybe while he was there, he'd see the man in the purple hat too.  
  
"Oh, look, it's the mad hatter's son, what you got there?"  
  
He was halfway to the pub when he heard Donald Dinsmoor's whiney voice. Instinctively, he put the letter behind his back. He continued to walk toward the pub, but backwards, so that he could keep an eye on them.  
  
"Is it true that yer dad died crazy?" Don taunted, and some of the boys laughed.  
"Don't you have anything better to do?"  
  
"Maybe, but this is more fun." Some of Donald's gang moved around behind him and suddenly, the boy found himself trapped. One of them snatched the envelope out of his fingers.  
  
"Hey, give me that back!" He began to panic. The boys teasingly handed the letter off to one another until it finally got into Donald's hands.  
  
"A letter? Who would be writing to your family? The Mad Hatter's Guild? It's not likely that anyone in your family can actually read it." Donald flipped it over and read the front. His eyebrows lifted. "And it's addressed to you."  
To him. The boy was baffled. Who would be writing to him? "Give it here," he demanded. He could feel that he was getting angry again, but began to wish something would happen this time.  
  
"No, I'm going to be nice and read it to you." Donald tore open the envelope and pulled out a piece of paper. Two other pages fell out and landed in the gutter. Donald stooped to pick them up; they were wet and soiled. "Oops, sorry about that." The boys in his group sniggered. Don then began to read, but he burst out laughing.  
  
The boy became distressed. "Give it to me now."  
  
"No, no. Here," Donald could barely contain his mirth. "'We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry-what is this? What a load of crock! And tisk tisk. You know witchcraft is a sin. You're mother will be so pleased."  
  
The boy was now as confused as ever-and hurt. What type of joke was this? Was that what the letter said? If it did, why would someone be so mean? He reached out for it, biting his lip to fight back the tears.  
  
Donald was laughing heartily now. "Here, Hatter, take your letter," and he threw it into the gutter. "This just shows how mad your whole family is."  
The boy waited for Donald to leave with his gang before sitting down on the curb. He stuck his chin on his hands and stared down at the letter, watching the filthy water soak into the parchment. Soon a tear trickled down and plopped onto one of the only dry spots left. Donald had to have been telling the truth or else he wouldn't have left so easily. He wondered who would have been so mean to send something like that.  
  
He wanted more than anything else to go to school but was too poor. For a short time when he was younger his mother had sent him to the school run by the church, but within his first few days there, he had got into a fight with a girl during mass and the goblet holding the holy wine hovered and dumped over her new dress. Everyone had screamed, pointed fingers yelling witchcraft and he had never been allowed to come back and his family had to embarrassingly cover it up. Still his mother complained about it. She thought that the school had lied about the whole incident. The story was so absurd, even for her.  
  
So those two words together: witchcraft and school, stung. Another tear dripped down his nose and onto the envelope.  
  
"Pardon me."  
  
Hurriedly, the boy wiped his face and looked up. It was George Potter, the man in the purple topper.  
  
"But did I hear that you have been accepted to Hogwarts?"  
  
The boy blinked and opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out. When it seemed he wasn't going to get an answer, the man stooped down and picked up the letter out of the gutter, he then drew a stick from inside his jacket and tapped the pieces of paper with it. Just like magic, they were clean and dry. He handed them back. The boy could only stare at the papers in puzzlement, flipping them over, inspecting them.  
  
"Well, congratulations, my dear boy. I'm a Hogwart's alumni myself," and he winked. He soon realized, however, that the boy evidently didn't know about Hogwarts. "I was watching your card trick yesterday. I also heard about your story of how you leapt on top of Mr. Nickle's Bakery. You've got real magic."  
"Magic?" This man was crazy. "Magic isn't real, if it is, my mum...she says it's the devil's work."  
  
At this, Mr. Potter snorted a laugh. "Ah, a typical Muggle reaction to something that they can't explain. Magic folk do it too. Get scared of what they don't understand and so brand it as evil. Human nature. No, my boy, magic's real, and can be a very good thing, if you learn how to use it right. And that is why you need to go to school."  
  
"But," the boy started. "I can't go to school. We have no money. In fact, my mum was thinking of sending me to one of the mills or the coal mine if we couldn't start making ends meet."  
  
This made Mr. Potter look extremely sad. He pulled off his hat and the powdered wig. His hair had turned platinum silver and looked identical to the wig. "Well," he looked down at the curly-haired boy. He was such a pretty boy. He hated to think what the Muggle factories or the coal mines would do to such a child. "You're part of our community now. And we can help you-and your family."  
  
"Really!" the boy exclaimed, standing up quickly. Then he thought aloud, "What community?"  
  
"The magic community of course! Where there are others, just like you, who make things happen-with magic."  
  
"You mean wizards and witches are real?"  
  
Mr. Potter smiled and nodded. "And you're one of them."  
  
The boy couldn't believe it. Absent mindedly, he held out the envelope and letter. "So this isn't a prank?"  
  
Mr. Potter sidled closer and looked down at the letter with the boy. "It's as real as you are I."  
  
He was actually allowing himself to get excited. "Can you read it for me then?" Then he thought, "Will it matter that I've never been to school before?"  
  
"Not at all." Mr. Potter returned the wig and hat on his head and adjusted his glasses. "We get a few students every year that don't know an A from a B, and though it's becoming rarer. You'll be fine. Now, let's see here." He glanced at the front of the envelope. "Your first name is?"  
  
"Albus," the boy said quickly.  
  
"Very fine to meet you, Albus. Now let's see here," Mr. Potter continued, now reading the letter, "Dear Mr. Dumbledore. We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry..." 


End file.
